How did you get fat?

As a child, I was a bit overweight - nothing horrible, but probably 10-15 lbs throughout. In high school, I slimmed down because I was really active in sports and weight training and weighed about 150-160 and had a great athletic body.  My mom doesn't cook and we ordered in for dinner a lot, but I managed to burn it off being busy. Plus, I didn't eat lunch - I used lunch hour to run the track....  After hs is when the real trouble began. I ate out a lot again because frankly, I didn't know how to cook. I was attending college fulltime and a 3/4 time job. I packed on about 40 lbs. I had met my first husband about this time and got pregnant 8 months after graduating high school and I've been obese ever since. I weighed almost 300 lbs the day I delivered him. Part of it was due to preeclampsia I developed. I managed to drop down to 220 before I met my husband now. Then, we got married, got pregnant and I developed the same problems and gestational diabetes and ended up gaining 50 lbs. I got back to about 240 and got pregnant again. This time I managed to maintain my weight during the pregnancy, but packed on the weight after my daughter was born. I ballooned back up to 290. Then, I got back to 210 in 2005 when my hubby was gone on a year long Iraq deployment. When he got home, I let myself get lazy again and got back up to 270. Now, I'm struggling to lose weight again & I'm back down to 235. I'm determined to get back down to 150 and stay there, but the past 2-3 weeks I keep having speed bumps! Hubby is leaving for school for about 90 days and I plan on putting my diet/exercise plan into overdrive while he's gone.

wow - what a question.... My mother has always been obsessed with her weight.  She speaks with pride of how trim she was in high school because she would eat 1/2 a scrambled egg for breakfast and a banana and glass of milk for lunch every day... She has been overweight all of my life.  When I was seven she enrolled me in TOPS with her.  When I was in the 7th grade I had breasts and wore a size 13.  In comparison to my peers I was HUGE.  Senior Prom I was lucky to find a dress... because formals run small it was a size 20, in reality I wore a size 16.  I see pictures now and realize that I was curvy and cute.  At the time I belived I was huge and monsterish.  Jr. High and High school was dreadful.  Clothes were impossible to find in my size.  Boyfriends were even harder to find.  Sure.. they would make out with me, feel me up, sleep with me in the back of the buick - but none would want to be seen with me in public.  I didnt believe I was good enough and took what I could get. By the time I was 20 I had heard for years how I was too fat to find a husband... so I married the first person who showed any interest in me at all.  He was horrible.  I ate from depression and he fed me during the honeymoon period after abuse (most girls get flowers.... I would get a D**** cream cake) and managed to baloon to 300 pounds by the time we divorced 10 years later. My next gain was after I was laid off 6 years ago... this time I only gained 40... brining me to my current weight. I am finally quite happy with myself.  I am just sick of the wear and tear on my body and I want to be here for my son in the future.

I was overweight as a child but carried my weight well, didn't appear to be "fat" but chubby. Then I moved in permanently with my great grandmother at the age of 12 till the age of 18 and she rewarded and soothed away anything with food. I had no limits(where food was concerned) with her. She did not have a car and lived where there was no one to play with so I would eat out of boredom. We depended on someone else to take us shopping and I would look more forward to that than anything. Then at the age of 14 I was put on birth control pills for severe menstrual pain and then the weight really started pilling on. Then I began dieting at the age of 16 and from that moment forward the weight went up and down until I finally had surgery at a weight of 263 pounds. Candy

I wonder how many of us weren't obese at a young age but completely don't remember it that way?  The summer leading into 8th grade, if I remember correctly, I lost 25-35 pounds and was a fairly normal size (though, naturally, the girls I was surrounded with were mostly teeny-tiny). I may have been heavy before the weight loss, but I can't imagine I was clinically obese. Well, I sure thought of myself that way, and was treated that way by my mother and sister. I thought I was a gigantic cow. Well, I even got called one in my music class -- by a boy I ultimately felt sorry for. Even after I lost that weight, I felt huge...much better, but huge.  That's hardly my whole story, but I would say that's what's interesting to me. I wish I could have put it all in perspective, instead of wasting time hating myself and continuing to gain weight. It's funny how that happens.

That's a good question, Sonora I was not obese in high school.  I was certainly overweight, but not yet clinically obese.  I felt like the fattest girl in my class, but when I look at pictures I see now that I WASN'T the biggest, but I sure thought I was.

Good question really makes you think. I started getting fat at the age of 12. My entire family is obese. When we were kids it was just me and my oldest brother that was fat. The rest of my siblings were on the thin side. My father would verbaly abuse all of us. Not only was I called names every day at school,but had to endure it when I got home. My mother died when I was a baby. She was obese and died from a stroke at 38. My dad said "you are going to end up just like your mother". Thats what he would say when he was being kind. It was a lot worse then that. For some reason the more I was called names the more I would eat. My highest weight was 253 pounds. That is how much I weighed when I met my wonderful husband. He loved me just the way I was. I lost 100 pounds the first year we were togeather. After 20 years of marrige and three kids I gained back about 80 pounds which I will lose. I did it before I can do it again and this time I hope it lasts forever..................

WELL..... it's amazing the similarities that run throughout this thread.  I can see parts of my stories in many others story.  That's so weird, but then it makes our bond even stronger. This one is deep.  I started life as a normal child.  I weighed 8'1" at birth, my mother's largest child (of 4), but my sisters were twins and weighed 6' something each....so I always say technically they were the biggest. I was a tiny little thing until I started developing breasts at age 8.  I was very self-concious about this because none of the other girls were so I started putting on weight maybe to hide the fact that I was developing way too fast.  This was also shortly after my cousin's husband started molesting me and telling me if I ever told anyone he would kill my parents and turn to my sisters.  I thought I had to protect my family.  This was just too much for an 8 year old child to bear, so eventually (around 10) I broke down and told me my mother.  She broke down, and said that SOB, I'll kill him, ranted and raved, but about three months later when my cousin and family came to visit she welcomed them into the house and never said a word......I went to putting on weight at that point at a steady rate, asuming that if I was big as a cow he would have no interest in me.....for the most part from then on I managed to keep away from him or have others with me at all times when he was around. Fast forward a couple of years, when he was killed in a car accident, I felt guilty, felt that I had wished this upon him, but I cried for three days.....looking back I feel like this was tears for myself because a load of guilt was lifted off of me that day, and releif that I never had to deal with that again. In the meantime other girls were starting to develop so I became very active physically, hiking, softball, walking to friends houses, riding bikes, just whatever activity was happening at the time I pretty much participated.....I was still chubby but solid..... The scars of the abuse made me withdraw from the interest of guys and so when I did go out with someone, if they acted at all interested in sex...that was it.  No more dates.  I hid in the use of marijuana and alcohol (which made dates easier and allowed me to make-out with guys). I tettered between 145-160 lbs. throughout high school and thought I was huge.  (according to all the kids in school, I was) I finally met my DH at age 18 and he was caring and patient and never tried to push me into going further than I was ready.  I married him 11 months later (at 150 lbs.). The rest just kinda came with two pregnacies where I was on bedrest for a number of months, gained 40 lbs with first child, lost a lot of weight after that....got down to 135, looked hot.  Got pregnant again, gained 60 lbs.....never have completely pulled all that weight off and with the years of bad food choices, sedentary life style, college, stress and family illnesses, I put on add'tl weight. This is by no means excuses, it's just how I got here.....what I'm going to do to get it off and keep it off is a work in progress. On a side note, I thought I was huge and hideous the day I got married, but when I look back at the pictures now, I am amazed at how good I did look.  LOL Sorry so long, this thread caused a lot of soul searching.....

My story is simple too.   I was born fat at 10 lbs 4 oz.  I've been that way my whole life. During my child hood days I don't remember overeating... At least not like I do now.  From age 0-10 I lived with my mother who was a nurse.  We did eat quite healthy and she always fixed my plates. I was allowed one diet soda, a tall glass of milk with dinner (or diet coke if I hadn't had one.) If I wanted anything else to drink it was water.  From 10 to 17 I lived with my father and step mother. (my mother passed away in 1990.)  My stepmother was much different.  She cooked very unhealthy as many mothers do from southern Louisiana. I suppose this was the start of my eating problems and also the years where I started trying to lose weight.  She kept lots of little debbie snacks, chips and various other things in the house.  Naturally I had a hay day on these things.  Around 14-15 I started dieting. Later, of course, I gave all that up and started back in on the snacks and this time added in much larger portions of the unhealthy cooking.  I moved out when I was 17 after graduating and traded the unhealthy home cooking for fast food and eating out.  Though I've dieted and had success many times throughout the years I still struggle with this eating habit.  Non-nutritious choices and lots of it.  That's why I am and stay fat.  Bad nutritional choices and gluttony.